Badlands
by Darius Lee
Summary: When members of his old gang start dying Charles Gunn must leave his comfortable job with Wolfram and Hart to help...even if help is the last thing they want.
1. Chapter 1

Badlands 

By Darius Lee

Prologue:

Charles Gun, Esquire, settled into his chair and picked up the newspaper folded neatly and placed in the exact center of his polished mahogany desk. Reading the local paper was something he liked to save for the end of his workday when the days' battles had been won and it was time to start planning the next days' skirmishes. To the right of the paper was his usual cup of coffee, dark and sweet, just the way he liked it. Gunn took a sip from the delicate china cup, savoring the taste, as he scanned the front page above the fold. Working as an attorney for Wolfram and Hart might have its drawbacks, but the perks were very, very nice, he thought for the hundredth time. He'd come a long way from the tired, scared, and hungry kid he'd been back in the Badlands.

"Mister Gunn?" The speaker on his desk made his secretary sound as if she was standing right next to him, not seated at her desk in the next room.

"Yes, Maggie?"

"You asked me to remind you. You have a meeting with the Mayor in half an hour. His assistant just called to verify that he is on his way."

"That's good. I left the Stockton deposition on your desk. Proofread it and make sure…" Gunn trailed off as his attention was drawn to a small article on the front page of the Times Metro section.

SECOND GANG SLAYING IN WEEK PUZZLES POLICE

The Los Angles Police Department reports that Anthony Guido Marquez, 24, was killed last night in what appears to be a gang-related mutilation murder. Sources report that Marquez, who had a history of gang-related violence, was found in the section of downtown Los Angeles commonly referred to as the "Badlands" with his throat torn open and an injury to his chest that authorities believe to be post-mortem. No weapon was found at the scene, and police say they have no suspects at this time. This is the second murder in one week in this troubled area. Simone Marie Johnson, 21, was found dead four days ago, apparently the victim of a…

_Simone_. Gunn remembered her as a skinny, freckle-faced kid, determined to hang with the big boys after vampires killed her younger sister. Dead now. And Tony Marquez. He'd been young back then too, but good. Really good. Gunn sighed. Skill only took you so far, if you played the game long enough, and Marquez had been playing the game for years now. _Just like you_, his mind whispered uneasily. Reaching up, Gunn made a minute adjustment to his silk tie. No. Not just like him. He'd gotten smart, in more ways than one. Smart enough to know that there was nothing he could do about this. Gunn started to put the paper down when a phrase caught his eye.

…authorities are unable to explain the necrotic tissue found on both bodies, and the coroner has yet to establish a cause of death in either case. No witnesses have stepped forward, and police say…

"Mister Gunn? Mister Gunn?"

"Yeah? I mean, yes, Maggie?"

"The Stockton deposition?"

"Oh, right, right. See that Mister Clawson gets that ASAP." Clawson reported to the senior partners, and the dude was a genius at picking apart the intricacies of a Sumerian… Gunn's gaze went back to the newspaper article. Two members in a week. And necrotic tissue? What was up with that? Vampires dusted, they didn't do a fast rot like in the movies. Gunn shook his head and glanced at his watch. Time to meet with the Mayor. Turning toward the window, he checked his appearance in the reflective glass. For just a moment the well-dressed, well-fed, and very well educated man who stared back at him was a stranger. He'd been one of them, once. Had led them. Maybe they'd been too stupid to get out, maybe he'd been lucky, maybe…

_And they're in over their heads, no maybe about it. You know it. So what you gonna do about it, G? You gonna cut 'em loose?_

"They cut me loose," Gunn murmured. His association with Angel, awkward as it sometimes was, along with his friendship with Lorne had cut the final tie between him and his old gang. If he were to show up now and offer to help they'd probably laugh in his face.

Let them. Picking up his briefcase—the mayor hated to be kept waiting--Gunn shocked his secretary by canceling the following days' appointments.

"But, but, where will you be," the woman protested faintly, looking as though her world was on the verge of falling apart. Had it really been that long since he'd taken a day off, for any reason?

"It's time I saw some old friends."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One:

"Mike, honey, are you sure this is the right way?" Joanna Chambers looked around the dark, empty street and shivered, tightening her hand on her fiancé's arm.

"Sure, sweetheart." Mike Johnson patted Joanna's arm, trying to smile reassuringly. "Brad said that the shortcut was a little dicey, but it's going to be a whole lot faster than waiting for a cab. You know what that's like when the shows are getting out."

"Yes, but…" Joanna trailed off doubtfully. The shortcut their friend Brad had given them was supposed to be faster, and he _did_ say it would look a little creepy at first. But it felt like they'd been walking for an hour, not just fifteen minutes or so, and the after-show crowds had disappeared blocks ago. Now the only people around were a pair of homeless men, wrapped in newspapers and sleeping in a filthy doorway, and a scruffy-looking teenaged boy staggering down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

"Maybe we should ask for directions," she tried. "That boy might know--" She broke off as the boy, now just across the street from them, staggered to a stop and spun around wildly.

"Shut up! Leave me alone!" The teen's shout sounded very loud on the quiet street, but there was no object for his sudden fury, Joanna saw with a twinge of pity. He swung thin arms at phantoms only he could see before stumbling back against the graffiti-covered wall, putting his hands to his ears as if to block out some deafening roar only he could hear.

"I don't think so, Jo." Mike sounded just a little unsure of himself now, and Joanna had a moment to hope he was going to suggest that they turn around before he shook it off and spoke again. "Look, there's a stoplight up ahead. We'll find a store and use their phone. We're just a block or two off, that's all." His confidence was both loud and forced, but Joanna nodded her agreement, batting absently at a fly that was apparently as lost as they were. Mike was never wrong, at least in his own mind. But he'd take care of them. He always did.

Smiling nervously at her fiancé, Joanna spared one last glance at the boy who had been shouting at imaginary monsters. He seemed so young to be in such a dangerous place, she thought was a recurrence of pity. Not that two middle class accountants belonged in a—she looked away quickly. The boy had sat down in an open doorway and was now wrapping something around one arm in a gesture that her love of all things "Law and Order" had made all too familiar to her: the boy, surely no more than sixteen years old, was preparing to shoot up. Biting her lip, Joanna turned her head. _Just don't look_, she told herself, batting at a pair of flies dive-bombing her head. _There's nothing you can do. Look at the nice, safe, brick wall instead._

"'Welcome to the Badlands'," she read aloud through lips numb with fear. The words had been spray painted on the wall in a red so deep it looked like blood. Another hand had added, in a scrawl that looked like it had been painted on with enormous claws, _Death is Near_. "Honey," she began.

"It's kids. Just kids." Mike took her hand in a painfully tight grip and began dragging her up the sidewalk toward the stop. Flies buzzed around both of them as they hurried toward the streetlight and its promise of safety, never seeing the slender, graceful Japanese man who emerged from the shadows to follow them.

_Bliss_. Jack Wang closed his eyes as a rush of warm contentment flowed out from his stomach, coating everything in its path with a blanket of pleasure and soothing, heavenly calm. Both the weeping woman and her kid and the monster across the street were gone—not that they'd ever really been there in the first place. As the heroin soothed his ragged nerves and slowed his pounding heart it was easy to admit that what he'd seen was just a hallucination. Without the horse they always seemed so _real_, but the doctors, full of shit in so many ways, were right about that much. No one else ever saw or could touch the people who had followed him for as long as he could remember, and that, friends and neighbors, was pretty much the textbook definition of schizophrenia.

Not that it mattered now. Everything was copasetic, and would be for hours. Leaning back against the boarded-up door in boneless relaxation, Jack watched with only the vaguest of interest as a pickup truck full of roughly dressed men pulled up in front of him. A black man in his early twenties leapt out of the bed of the truck, carrying a wooden baseball bat that had been sharpened to a point at one end. Weird, Jack thought absently. The man came to stop in front of him, one heavily booted foot kicking him in the knee. The pain was distant and transitory.

"Hey! Junkie! Which way did he go?" Another kick. "God damn it, which way?"

"You're wasting your time, Rondell," a voice called out derisively from the cab of the truck.

"The little boy with the woman, or the monster," Jack asked serenely. The smack hadn't been hot enough to let him nod off entirely, not yet, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate and that was fine by him. The man would think he was nuts for talking about drowned women and monsters in business suits, but that was okay. He _was_ nuts. Jack closed his eyes with a sigh of contentment. To sleep, perchance _not_ to dream…

"Hey!" Rough hands jerked him to his feet and Jack opened his eyes reluctantly. The black man, Rondell, was still there, and apparently angry about something. "The vampire!" He shook Jack like an underweight rag doll. "Japanese guy, black suit. We know he came this way. Which way did he go from here?"

"I didn't know insanity was contagious." Jack felt himself slammed against the boarded up door, his head smacking against the wood with a _thunk_ sound that was almost funny. The monster across the street had been wearing a suit of human just like the angry man described, he thought fuzzily. It was kind of comforting to know he wasn't the only one with what the doctors had 'called such a unique form of schizophrenia'. He was jerked forward again, and while the _thunk_ sound had been kind of funny the first time he didn't really want to hear it again. Better to indulge the poor guy, Jack figured. Not like it mattered much anyway.

"He was across the street." Jack pointed with a hand that felt like it was a hundred miles away and weighed roughly a ton. "Headed toward Eighteenth, went left at the light." Rondell released him and he sank gratefully to the sidewalk without a sound of protest. So much noise and _thunking_ could chase the bliss away before its time, Jack knew, and he only had enough for one more ride; no way was he wasting this one. "Hope you brought a flyswatter," he called after the man as he sprinted for the revving truck. Jack watched the pickup tear off after the monster, wondering briefly at their shared hallucination before surrendering to merciful sleep.

"Man, I can't believe you're taking the word of some wasted-ass junkie," Stone told Rondell with a grimace of disgust. Both men held on tight as the pickup screamed around the corner on two wheels, its suspension creaking in protest.

"Like I had a choice? We are _not_ letting this bastard get away again." Rondell craned his head around the side of the cab and then pounded on the roof. "Right, right," he yelled to the driver. He'd seen something. It might be nothing, maybe a hooker taking a seriously desperate john into an alleyway for a little wham, bam, clap for you, man. Or it just might be—

"Bingo," Clarence crowed from inside the cab. "Houston, we have contact!"

"Everybody stay frosty," Rondell called out as his people piled out of the truck as it screeched to a halt. "Remember what happened last night."

"This leech is toast," Stone replied in a low rumble as he moved with a speed and grace surprising for a man his size to take up his position on the roof of the cab, adjusting the heavy-duty stake shooter in its rig and grinning tightly.

Clarence moved up to mirror Rondell, unslinging his axe and swinging the heavy weapon easily from side to side as he stopped just to one side of the alleys mouth. Inside the alley both men could see a white civilian sprawled on the cement, his head canted unnaturally to one side. Marx and Topper had already disappeared, headed for the other end of the alley. They'd all danced in this particular alley before, with its high brick walls and absence of windows or nearby streetlights. Normally one or two of them was enough to ace their target, but tonight Rondell was taking no chances.

Small whimpers reached them, along with a sucking sound that turned even the most hardened of stomachs. Clarence looked over at Rondell, his expression clearly saying _let's get this show on the road_. Rondell shook his head, giving Marx and Topper their full thirty seconds to get in position. As his mental count ran down Rondell held up five fingers. Four. Three. Two. _One_.

Blinding light illuminated the narrow alley from both ends, showing the gruesome tableau in sharp detail. Beyond the sprawled body of the white guy his female companion stared back at them, her neck coated with blood and her eyes wide with horror. Holding her up was the slender Asian man they'd been hunting, one arm draped across her chest from behind while the other held her firmly around the waist. At the sudden flare of their lights the vampire lifted his head and snarled in Rondell and Clarence's direction. From behind him Rondell heard the sharp whisper of Clarence's stake thrower. Just as they'd planned, the first stake, followed immediately by its brother, shot through the air and buried itself high in the vampire's chest just above the stunned woman. Last night Clarence had sworn he'd had a direct hit, but the light had been bad and the distance a good hundred yards. This time there was no mistaking the solid hits. Rondell and Clarence surged forward as one, watching for the vamp to go to dust and ready to help him along if he showed signs of dusting too slow or, more likely, to catch his victim when the leech went out.

Except neither thing happened. Instead the vampire roared in fury, jerking the two bolts out and snapping them like they were twigs before tossing the woman aside and spreading his arms wide. A thick, rotting smell immediately filled Rondell's nose and he choked back a gag as he lifted his Jose Canseco stake. Stone was doing the same, and Rondell could hear Marx and Topper charging down to meet them.

The vampire said something in a language that might have been Japanese. Or maybe it was Chinese, Korean, or Timbukian, for all Rondell knew. Gunn might be a scholar these days, but _he _was a soldier, and all he needed to know was how to kill the damned things. His stake came whistling down. _Say goodnight, Gracie_.

As his hand passed through the space where the vampire's chest had been Rondell felt his hand turn to ice. It felt like he'd just plunged his hand—his whole arm now—into a barrel of half-melted ice. The baseball bat stake slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the sidewalk. His eyes widening in stunned surprise, Rondell caught a glimpse of a decayed face with empty eye sockets before a swarm of flies erupted from where the face had been, turning the air black. Flies handed on his skin, in his ears, his nose. They bumped and bumbled against his eyes ands slipped between his lips to fill his mouth. _He couldn't breathe_. Waving wildly at the flies Rondell stumbled backward, the smell of death and decay thick all around him.

"Get the fuck away from him!" Clarence, not understanding what the hell had happened, only that somehow the damned vampire had gotten the best of them again, swung his axe in a lethal arc. Maybe the stakes hadn't worked as planned, but he hadn't seen a vampire yet come back from an old-fashioned beheading.

The vampire, which now looked nothing like the neat, well-dressed Japanese man they'd been chasing for days, made no attempt to duck. Instead it caught the flashing axe by its handle, jerking it free of Clarence's grip and tossing it negligently aside. Momentum from his aborted swing sent Clarence stumbling forward into the vampire's outstretched arms. The vampire caught him in its embrace like an ardent lover, drawing the street warrior close. It spoke, and its unintelligible words reeked of decay. Clarence screamed.

Rondell thrashed on the ground, trying desperately to breathe. He'd heard Clarence's scream and tried to rise, choking on flies, only to be knocked down as someone charged by him. Stone, the gang leader realized. Coughing out flies, Rondell had managed to get to his knees when a terrible, despairing scream rent the air.

"You bastard!" Stone's voice was rough with fear, a sound Rondell had never heard from his first lieutenant before. Wiping flies from his eyes, he looked up just in time to see Clarence's axe hit the ground. Beyond it Stone was on his hands and knees, vomiting helplessly. The vampire turned its rotting, misshapen head to look at him, tossing Clarence to one side like an empty beer can.

"Lo Pan," it said in a wet, gravelly voice. Rondell was still struggling to get back to his feet when the vampire surged toward him. A bone-chilling cold washed over him in a flood, sweeping him down into a darkness filled with the stench of decay.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Two:

"Wake up, you miserable little hype." Cold water splashed into Jack's face, washing away the last of his sleepy contentment and jerking him painfully out of the Land of Nod. Rubbing his grimy face, he pushed himself upright and looked blearily around.

He was in a warehouse of some kind, Jack saw, one that hadn't been in use for that purpose in a long time. Dust-covered crates were piled haphazardly into leaning rows and thick cobwebs hung down from the ceiling like lace, swaying in the breeze from the broken-out windows high over his head. But a truck he remembered vaguely from the night before—it _was_ the next day, wasn't it?—sat parked to one side, and men and women in rough clothes were gathered all around him. Something was going on here. The question was, what? And was it going to bite him in the ass?

"Yo! Junkie!" The rough, angry voice that had greeted him with the splash of water belonged to a red-haired man, built like a weightlifter, who stepped forward at Jack's blurry, questioning look. An empty bucket swung from one beefy hand. After so many months on the street Jack's first thought was to hope the guy wasn't going to beat him with the damned thing. "You awake, you scrawny little piece of shit?"

"Stone, come on," a woman remonstrated. "He's just a kid." She had long, dark blond hair and a gentle face, but the rest of the woman was as lean and hard as the rest of them. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

"Kid, my ass. He's a fuckin' hype, a heroin junkie. The only thing they're good for is bait."

"So why am I here?" It was always hard to think, coming down, but this setup was even more confusing that what he usually woke up to. Were they soldiers? Terrorists? What? "Who are you people?"

"Who we are doesn't matter. What we are is soldiers. Warriors. We keep our turf clean." He pulled out a long knife and knelt beside Jack, his eyes like chips of blue ice. "Clean of undead assholes like your buddy."

"Who?" Jack looked up at the man in honest confusion. Undead assholes? Was the guy high? Last night was pretty much a blur, but he _did_ remember telling them something about a Japanese guy in a business suit, and thinking that the guy was some kind of monster. "Look, man, like you said, I'm a junkie. A crazy junkie. Whatever I told you, it was just bullshit, okay?"

"No." The knife caressed his cheek, sliding down over his skin to press lightly against his throat. "No, see, you _knew_ what he was. He looked like a regular, uptown businessman, and you knew. You called him a monster. Even told us to bring our damn flyswatters. Now, how could you know about that, junkie? Unless maybe, just maybe, you're in league with him."

Jack felt his breath freeze in his throat. The guy might be nuts, but he was also serious. Dead serious. "Look, man, I told you. I'm a fuckin' psycho, okay?" He flinched as the knife bit into his skin. "I don't know anything, okay? I see crazy shit all the time, and none of it's real. You think I shoot smack for the fun of it? When I'm not high I see dead people and monsters all the fuckin' time." He was aware that his voice was rising, but was helpless to stop it. "I see shit like that guy all the time, everywhere I go. It doesn't mean a goddamn thing."

"You don't want to talk?" The knife slid across the skin of his throat, leaving a sharp, thin, stinging sensation behind. A warm bead of liquid trickled down his neck. "Okay. We can make you talk. Don't even have to hurt you to do it." He pulled the knife away and held up a battered leather case held shut with rubber bands. "All we have to do is get rid of this." He used the knife to cut through the rubber bands. "You don't tell us what we want to know, I break this." He took out the small vial and held it in front of Jack's eyes. "Then we do…nothing. How long do you think it'll be before you're ready to sell out your own mother for a jab?"

"No, don't," Jack felt his mouth go dry as cotton. "That's all I've got, man. You can't—" He watched in horror as the man set the vial on the cement floor and lifted his boot. Rough hands grabbed him as he tried to reach for the precious liquid. "Don't!"

"Don't." The voice, tired but with the unmistakable sound of command, cut through Jack's rising panic like a knife. "Leave the kid alone, Stone."

"Rondell. You shouldn't be up yet, boss. You know what the doc said." Anger and resentment flashed across the man's face and were gone so fast Jack wasn't sure he'd seen them at all. His face still flushed with anger, the redheaded man nonetheless picked up Jack's vial of heroin and put it back in his case. Jack snatched it up and shoved it into his shirt with a deep sigh of relief.

"I'm all right." The man Jack remembered from last night walked slowly forward, the rest of the group parting for him without a word. "Why don't you go check on Silas? He should be back by now."

"He'll be fine. It's broad daylight out there." For a minute Jack thought that the man Stone was going to refuse the order, but at last he nodded. "Okay. We'll play it your way. Marx, you're with me." As he turned and walked away the leader gestured to the two holding Jack, who then gently lifted him to his feet.

"You okay? Stone means well, but sometimes he gets a little…intense." Jack had the feeling that _intense_ was this guy's middle name as well, but at least now nobody was holding knife to his throat. Good news was relative, wasn't it?

"I'm okay," Jack said, pulling himself free of his helpers to stand unsteadily on his own. "I just can't help you. Wish I could." Anything to keep these angry, dangerous men from being mad at him.

"We'll see. C'mon. Why don't we get you something to eat?" He sniffed. "Maybe a shower, too. Sound like a plan?"

"You guys hunt vampires." Jack put the Pepsi can down and looked across the battered kitchen table at Rondell. A shower and food had done wonders for his thought processes, but what the man was trying to get him to believe still sounded nuts. Behind Rondell a young, beautiful black woman with curly golden brown hair looked at them sorrowfully before turning and walking through the wall and disappearing. Jack did his best to ignore her.

"I know how it sounds. But you live on the streets. You have to have seen the shit that's going down out there. We're the only ones—well, almost the only ones—trying to keep it safe. The human race went from predators to prey when the vampires showed up."

"I've seen," What? Hallucinations? Drug-induced visions? "Weird stuff, yeah. But, man, I ain't right. I never have been. And every doc I've ever been to would say you're as crazy as me. No offense."

"None taken," Rondell said easily. "I ain't saying you ain't messed up, okay? But you saw something last night. Something real. The guy I asked you about, _you _called him a monster. Not me. And you knew about the flies. This guy, this vampire, has killed six people that we know about. Three of them were ours." His eyes darkened and Jack looked around uneasily, wondering if this guy was going to pull a knife, too. "One of them last night. You say you don't work for him, okay. I believe you. But this guy is breaking all the rules we thought we knew about vampires, and so far we haven't been able to do a damned thing to stop him. If you know something about this guy, _anything_, we need to know it."

Jack hesitated. Last night had been a bad one. Hallucinations had crowded in on him one after another until he thought his head was going to explode. And since he'd done his impromptu exit from Gateway he hadn't tried to describe the crazy things he saw to anyone. He bit his lip, struggling to put his hallucinations into words. "I don't know…I just don't see how this can help. _It wasn't real_. But, yeah. I remember him. He was…old. And evil, like a dark stain. He was wearing that Japanese guy like a suit of clothes, but it wasn't him. He was…something else. Something hungry. Something rotten." Jack paused, lost in the memory.

"Go on," Rondell said quietly. The rest of his people had gathered around him. Listening. They looked wary and almost afraid. Afraid of _him_?

"There isn't any more. It was like looking at a double exposure. There was the business guy, and there was this _thing_." Jack shivered. "That's it. End of story. Believe me, I don't want to know any more about that guy. He gave me a major case of the creeps. Even if he _wasn't_ real," Jack added with a shaky laugh.

"He was real enough to Marquez. And Simone. And Clarence." Rondell leaned back in his chair, considering. "Okay. How about this. He kept saying stuff, stuff we couldn't understand. Some of it sounded like _wah doku desi ka-_something. And _low pan_, wasn't it, Topper?" The other man, a Hispanic with a fierce goatee and wire-rimmed glasses, nodded.

Jack shook his head. "Sorry. Doesn't mean a thing to me." At Rondell's look he snorted. "What, you think all us slant-eyes speak the same language? He was Japanese. I'm Chinese. Well, Chinese-American. Big difference, okay?" The sad-eyed black girl was back, and Jack closed his eyes and counted to ten, willing her to go the hell away. When he opened his eyes again she was gone and Rondell was looking at him strangely. "Lo Pan sounds kind of like a name," Jack offered, wanting to make The Look, one that he was so damned tired of, go away. "The rest means about as much to me as it does to you. Sorry."

"What about Gunn?" The woman who had remonstrated with Stone earlier stepped forward. "You know he's got resources we don't—"

"Gunn went his way, we went ours. And you know the kind of _people_," Rondell's voice was thick with distaste, "that he's hanging out with now. End of discussion."

"But—"

"_End it_. We'll deal with this," Rondell told her, tabling the conversation firmly.

"Look, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out," Jack said into the uncomfortable silence that followed. "There are online translators for the Japanese, if that's what it is. And if Lo Pan is a name, it might be listed somewhere. All I need," He looked around, suddenly alarmed. "My bag—"

"You mean this?" Rondell pulled a laptop carrier that had clearly seen better days from beneath the table. "Nice setup. I'm surprised you haven't hawked it yet."

"Not a chance," Jack said, reached eagerly for the case. "Well, I haven't had to," he admitted, his eyes suddenly downcast as he caressed the only thing of value he had left. "This is my baby."

"You weren't always this jacked up," Rondell said quietly as Jack pulled the laptop out and turned it on. It wasn't quite a question.

"Nah, I've always been messed up," Jack said, looking away from the strong, self-confident man sitting across from him. Uncoiling a thin gray wire, he plugged the laptop modem into the small offices' phone jack and hoped it would work. "But the smack, yeah. That's pretty new." _I want to help you_, a too-familiar voice whispered in his head. _Such a pretty, pretty boy_. Jack clenched his fists, suddenly wanting, _needing_, another hit. _Fuck you_, he told the man's voice instead. The way he hadn't told him when it really mattered.

"Here," he said, turning the laptop around so Rondell could see it too. "The guys at UC Berkeley have a decent translation program running. You just choose the languages—English to Japanese in this case—and type in the phrase. You don't even need to know the Japanese ideograms." Pulling the laptop back to face him he typed in what Rondell had described, guessing at the spelling. Nothing. Two more tries turned up equally disappointing results. "Well, maybe if we look at a phrase book," Jack tried, typing in a new URL with a deft, easy speed at odds with his scruffy appearance. "Oh." Jack grinned shamefacedly a moment later. "Well, that was tough."

"What?"

"Well, your guy, your vampire, was saying 'Where is Lo Pan?' Nothing very complicated there." It was disappointing, and that was weird. None of what he'd seen was real, so what did it matter? But these guys saw _something, _Jack realized. Something or someone killed their friends. And they were so sure that that 'something' was the same monster he'd hallucinated the night before. But if it wasn't real, how could that be?

"So who is this Lo Pan guy?" Rondell had come around to look over his shoulder, his face no longer angry. He might claim to be a foot soldier, but there was definitely something going on upstairs, Jack thought.

"Let's find out."

It hadn't been that easy. In the end Jack had to wade through countless Feng Shui references and totally irrelevant I Ching sites before he found something that might be useful. For a while he was able to do the work well, enjoying the feeling of being clean, full, and more or less in control of his own brain, none of which seemed to happen very often these days. But then the pretty black chick reappeared, rattling him badly. Most of the time she just kind of hung around, bleeding from a neck wound and looking all sorrowful. But twice she had suddenly morphed from sad and pretty to angry and bloodthirsty, leaping toward him with sharp white fangs that looked capable of tearing his scrawny bod to pieces. Both times he'd nearly jumped out of his skin, the second actually falling to the floor and scooting away, his eyes wide, before she faded back into nothingness. The look on the faces of Rondell's people hadn't been fun. _Watch the crazy junkie, folks. Hope you enjoy the show_.

"Anything?" Rondell's voice jolted him back to the present. Jack came back to himself to find that he'd been rubbing the inside of his arm, already hungry for the next hit of chemical bliss.

"Yeah. It turns out that the guy is, was, Chinese, not Japanese. But don't get too excited, it's not like he's my second cousin or anything. The guy's been dead for centuries. Twenty two of them, I think." Jack leaned back in his chair, rubbing his arm and trying not to think about his last fix, sitting just within reach. "According to the stories, he was a mover and shaker back around 300 B.C., and somehow pissed off the first sovereign emperor of China. The emperor didn't just have the guy whacked, but instead he cast a spell on him." Jack shrugged. "Hey, that's the story. Anyway, he was left something like a ghost. It says here he was supposed to find a green eyed girl—not exactly, you know, common in China—one who could 'tame the savage blade,' whatever that means."

"Huh." Rondell, reading over Jack's shoulder, looked puzzled. "So he wasn't a vampire?"

"Nope. Didn't have anything to do with them, as far as I can tell. Though this is kind of interesting." The laptop screen changed to show a newspaper article. "It would have taken a lot longer to dig all this up off the search engines, except the guy's name came up right here in LA just a few months ago. There's a small article here about a series of cult murders that were somehow tied to the Lo Pan legend. The article doesn't say much, which is, you know, kind of weird, considering that a bunch of people died, but it talks a little about Lo Pan, and that the cops had help taking the cult down."

"Help? From who?"

"Let's see…here it is. Some place called Angel Investigations."


End file.
